


get your hands dirty and rip up the garden

by sajere1



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Buried Alive, Claustrophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22851901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: 10. You confessed your feelings and we’re about to kiss but we get interruptedFabian wakes up in a coffin.
Relationships: Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 5
Kudos: 190





	get your hands dirty and rip up the garden

Fabian wakes up in a coffin.

It takes a moment to figure out – at first he thinks he’s just in a box, and it isn’t until he traces his hands along the edges and tastes the stifle of the air that he realizes its shape with a terrible sinking feeling. He tries to look around, but he’s in full darkness – scrambles to see what he can remember. There was a…demon? An old enemy of his dad’s, maybe? It’s scattered pieces, and hard to remember when his throat is constricting, panicked, because he doesn’t have room to fucking _move,_ and when he finally manages to worm his arms up and press against the ceiling of his cage he hears dirt shifting.

Someone – someone buried him, he realizes, between choking panic. He is going to suffocate here.

The logical part of him, which sounds suspiciously like a mixture of Riz and Adaine, is telling him that he should stay still, breathe shallow, waste as little air as possible to maximize the amount of time his friends can find him. But Fabian – oh, god, Fabian can’t die here. He claws at the lid of the coffin above him, takes every piece of give that he can, slowly starts to pry the wood from the top a piece at a time.

He’s sweating before he knows it – cramped and completely unable to move or stretch – but he perseveres, lets himself huff breaths as he scrambles against the give of the wood. He has to get somewhere the others can find him. This coffin could have – anti divination, or something, Fabian could die here and never be found, he has to get out, even if he dies along the way he has to get somewhere Kristen can bring him back from.

He doesn’t know how long it takes – just knows that one moment he’s panting, fingers splintered and blistered, and the next moment he’s punctured through, dirt starting a quick trickle down onto his face.

He turns his head and works faster – just a little more, just a little more, if he can just dig his way up a little. The work is faster now that a hole has begun, and Fabian manages to squirm his whole arm through and up. With each inch of progress the line of dirt thickens until it comes down in enough weight enough that Fabian will be smothered in it soon. He grits his teeth and keeps pushing.

He can feel the weight of wood above him splintering, breaking just wide enough to get his head up, and he’s getting ready to push through it when he feels fingers on his ankle.

His whole body jolts as he yelps, slamming against the sides of the coffin. He looks down, as if that could possibly help at all, and sees nothing – but he can feel cold bone dragging up, sliding underneath the leg of his pants, fingers without skin curling over his bare leg. The panic is worse now, shaking through him, and it makes him clumsy, knocking his head against the lid, sending another puff of dirt raining down. He feels another hand reaching up, curling around one of his wrists, yanking him down against the floor of the coffin. He claws uselessly – slams his hand, frustrated, against the ceiling, and shouts, pained and afraid, yanks his free arm up through the whole in a last desperate attempt to open up the lid for himself - 

Through the dirt and confinement, he feels fingers brush against his own – living, moving, vibrant.

There’s a moment where both Fabian and the hand above stop, stunned, before he is wiggling his fingers to tell whoever it is that, _HEY, SUPER ALIVE AND IN TROUBLE ADVENTURER DOWN HERE._ He feels fingers digging into the dirt around his arm in a rush, dirt being pushed away layer by layer, scrambling and clawed and hurried across his skin. The skeletal hands on Fabian tighten, cutting off his blood flow, but he can see the end now, banging his arm randomly around above him in hopes of widening the hole, keeping his hand moving as a signal for whoever is above him.

Fabian feels a tug. There is a moment of confusion – the wood bends beneath him. His stomach sinks. The skeletons are pulling him down.

He only manages to sink an inch before the pair of hands above him grab his arm in return, frantic, and hold him there.

“Help,” Fabian calls up, voice hoarse, because there’s so little air in here and he’s pretty sure he’s going to dislocate an arm if he keeps getting pulled in two directions and he has to talk, he can’t be alone in this silence, he cannot die alone in this silence - 

One of the hands above him interlocks, tight, with his own hand, wrapping fingers through his. He clings to it – consciousness is starting to blur, at the very edges, he is so close to escaping, and he has to focus on holding on to the hand above him, has to keep himself from getting dragged away from his only chance at help.

He can hear, through the dirt, the sound of someone gasping, yanking Fabian’s grave up around him. Light breaks through the hole.

All at once, the skeleton hands recede. For a dazed moment Fabian almost lets himself collapse, as the blood rushes back into his hand and foot all at once. Then he is taking advantage of it – pressing up to peel the lid off as far as he can, pushing through, the dirt crumbling above him, a passageway, small and thin but real, opening above him.

Through the pressure of the dirt bearing down on him, he manages to do something like sitting up. Light headed, near-dead, he tightens his grip on the hand and lets it pull him up.

Riz stumbles back as Fabian breaks air, pulling him along as he scrambles up and through the whole, kneeing through the waist-deep dirt like a slog. Riz’s whole face and clothes are stained brown, his fingernails so crusted and dirty with that it grates against Fabian’s skin where he pulls. He looks as bad as Fabian feels – sweaty, pained, wide-eyed, gasping for breath as he finally pulls Fabian all the way out, stumbling back and collapsing to a seat on the mound of dirt, Fabian falling over next to him.

For a moment, the both lay there, heaving breath. Fabians digs his hands into the dirt to feel it run through his fingers – flops over and spreads his arms wide, breathes in air that is fresh and looks at a sky unending above him. When his stomach finally stops churning, when his lungs finally stop burning, he rolls onto his side, propping himself up as best he can. “What,” he says, trying with wobbly hands to sit up, “the fuck.”

His feeble attempts at getting up are completely smashes when Riz throws himself into his arms, wrapping himself Fabian’s neck in a tight cling. “You’re alive,” he wheezes, and Fabian can’t even find it in himself to care that Riz is smearing dirt and a bit of blood over his collar, can’t make himself move away from where Riz’s hands are wrapped tight against his neck and back, half his fingernails broken and vulnerable from the digging.. “Don’t - _do_ that.”

“I, uh, don’t know what it was I did?” Fabian returns the hug quickly, letting himself hold Riz loose around the waist. He’s still a bit dizzy, blinking stars from his eyes, but Riz’s weight is real and comforting on his legs. “But, uh. Will for sure not do it again.”

Riz makes a choked off noise that might be a sob but surely couldn’t be. “Good.”

“Could you not find a shovel?”

“There wasn’t time. You were – and I was so - “ Riz rocks gently in Fabian’s grip, a soothe for the both of them. “You idiot, you can’t just – just - “ He leans back and look at Fabian’s face and blurts out, “Oh, my god, I love you.”

The air goes exceptionally quiet. Fabian blinks.

Riz’s gaze – which had finally started to calm down – goes frantic again. He scrambles back out of Fabian’s arms. “Wait,” he says, “I didn’t mean to say that, I was just, because I thought you - you might dead, and we'd never find you, I meant, um, like, I love you, platonically, in a way that’s, that’s cool for friends to say, and I was worried, um, haha, let’s just, let’s just pretend that - “

Fabian is not listening to Riz’s rambling – though he probably should be, Riz did just save him – because he is too busy looking down at himself and frowning. “What the fuck, the Ball?” he says.

Riz’s voice crumbles. “What do you mean, what the fuck?” he says, hurt only just showing through his indignance.

“You couldn’t - “ Fabian gestures to himself. “I am covered in dirt. I know I’ve worn a suit in front of you before, and I know I look good in suits, surely if you were – going to confess, you could’ve, I don’t know. Given me that dignity? What even – I am so dirty. This is, the absolute least good I have ever looked. What the fuck?”

Riz stares. Fabian feels he has made his point quite clear. “Are you, uh…” Riz trails off. “Are we…just gonna…pretend this never happened?”

“No!” Fabian says, a little too fast, and Riz jumps. “I mean – we could. Um. Then you could do it again when I’m better dressed. That might be better. Then we could – I could be good at it, and it’d be romantic and stuff, and not.” He gestures to his own open grave. “Yeah. Uh.”

Riz’s eyebrows are so high on his forehead they may as well be buried in his hair. “…you…want me to say it again?” he says, slowly.

Fabian frowns. “If - um. That is. If you would like to. Do this. At a more appropriate venue. We could...” He’s leaning in, despite himself, eyes on Riz’s, because they are wide and good and Fabian is having trouble focusing. "If...if you wanted to..."

“Fabian,” Riz starts, hitching a breath, and the movement of his mouth tracks Fabian’s eyes, his hand coming up to cover Fabian’s arm. “Fabian - “ he tries again, half-dazed, leaning in -

“FABIAN!” There is a distant crashing sound of a gate opening and they jump away from each other, startled at the sound of several pairs of feet stampeding through the graveyard. “Fabian are you here? Yell if you’re dead! Fabian - “

“We’re over here!” Riz yells, already back in Adventure-Hero-Mode. His face is flushed, and he isn’t looking at Fabian. Fabian reaches out, starts to say something, when Adaine’s face crests over the side of the hole and a pair of hands pick him up.

“You’re ALIVE!” Kristen yells, cradling him in her arms. Fabian makes an indignant noise.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine – where the hell are we, and how did I get here?” he snaps, squirming to escape her grip. Damn Kristen and her weirdly high strength.

She lets him back on the ground – catches him immediately with an arm when he starts to teeter dangerously in place. When he glances over, Riz has already disappeared, the tail end of his shoe visible where he's zipped out of the hole at first opportunity. Something not quite like disappointment punches Fabian's chest. “Are you safe?” Adaine’s voice floats from the top of the hole. “You were knocked out, that skeleton demon teleported you, there was some sort of ritual - “

“I’m fine,” Fabian says again, rubbing his face with one hand. He looks up at the impassible steepness of dirt leading out of his hole. “…I may need help getting up, though.”

Kristen drags him step by step, catching him when he stumbles, and when they finally make it – heaving again – to the top of the grave, he waves her off, sitting down for a moment to get his bearings. Across the way, he can see the silhouette of Riz and Fig at the graveyard gate, Riz’s hands flashing about as he goes through some animated explanation on his side.

Fabian thinks of Riz’s blush, and the way his mouth moved, Riz’s hand grasping his through the dirt, the way Riz said _I love you._

Fabian is going to buy a new suit. It is going to be one worthy of a take two.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "the garden" by the crane wives which made me Feel So Much good god
> 
> im going to write something that isnt fabriz one day. i swear. i SWEAR. i was just. on a kick. i dont have to explain myself to u u arent my real dad
> 
> catch me on tumblr @riz-gukgak!


End file.
